Tag-Based Promotion Draws in Diners

Want to encourage employees or students to eat in your campus cafeterias? Follow the example of Eurest Dining Services (a division of Compass Group USA), which is running highly successful mobile marketing campaigns using Microsoft Tag.

Eurest wanted to add a mobile component to its dining marketing, particular to take advantage of mobile couponing and interact with customers on the fly. Since Eurest manages the campus cafeterias at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters – 35 cafés serving 51,000 people – it decided to start there.

“We chose Microsoft Tag because of its ease of use and the ‘green’ flexibility of being able to print a Tag once and update the content behind it at will, extending the life of printed materials,” says Mark Freeman, senior services manager for the Microsoft concession, the only corporate cafeterias to earn three stars from the Green Restaurant Association.

For the pilot campaign, Eurest targeted 4,875 diners at four locations, placing Tags on disposable cups in cafés and kitchenettes. Employees scanned them with their smartphones to win meal discounts. The response was overwhelming: Cafés saw a 45 percent redemption rate (four times the norm), and winners spent 15 percent more on their checks than non-players. The Tags were also used to communicate information on weekly specials, nutritional information, and other promotions.

The promotion has since been rolled out campus-wide, and to date, redemption rates are 71 percent and winner check averages have increased 11 percent. The broader campaign includes table tents and posters. In addition, the Tags also provide information on weekly dining specials and nutritional values.

"We’ve had a fantastic experience in working with Tag," says Bill Barfoot, content manager with Eurest. “Adoption has been phenomenal and it's very easy for customers to use."

Results from the pilot were so successful that Compass Group launched Tag marketing campaigns at six university campuses in Fall 2010. At the colleges, Tags were printed on posters, door hangers, brochures, table tents, pagers, and napkin holders. Cafeteria staff even wore Tagged T-shirts. The marketing encouraged students to scan the Tags to receive coupons, promotions, and other discounts for campus food services.

Future plans include leveraging Tag's Device ID functionality to distribute larger prizes based on the number of times a customer has scanned the Tags.